Graphics cards are the most important part of your computer if you are building a gaming PC or you want to be able to render high-resolution videos quickly. Graphics card just like any other part of your computer comes with different performance and price spectrum so that they can be used by anyone who wants to build PC for lightweight gaming, 4k gaming or machine learning.
We recently compared the budget graphics cards that can be used in esports gaming under $100, that was meant for people who wanted to spend less than 100 dollars on Graphics card. Following to this today our focus is to compare the Graphics cards that are meant for the enthusiasts and hardcore gamers who want gaming at the highest possible resolutions with best framerates.
How we tested
Contrary to what we did last time, we are using only two Graphics cards today for our test. Both graphics cards are flagship devices of the biggest Graphics card vendors AMD and Nvidia, the pseudo flagship in case of Nvidia as there is no comparison between the GeForce GTX 1080Ti and AMD VEGA 64, GTX 1080Ti is a vastly superior and much expensive device.
But we can safely compare best of AMD with GeForce GTX 1080 as both cards have slightly similar specifications and comparable price. Both cards suffer shortages and insanely high prices, but nowadays both of them are retailing at a price close to their reveal price. For our test, the test rig was kept the same except for the Graphics card to keep the test as justified as possible. We tested many games at 4k high settings GTX 1070, and VEGA 56 are also present in the benchmarks, but we will not talk about them. The games ones with most significant results are as follows.
Ashes of the Singularity
Ashes of the Singularity is a game that is usually known for its engine’s ability to manage thousands of players making their moves at once such game requires beefy specifications to run; it was the first game to require a Quad-core processor and Dx 12 graphics. The game is also used as a benchmark to test the newer hardware. We ran this game for about thirty minutes with the respective flagships from Nvidia and AMD.
The game is still very “heavy” even for the flagship devices as none of them could maintain 60FPS even none of them hit the 60FPS at any time during the test. GTX 1080 was slightly ahead of the VEGA 64 with average framerates of 48 against 46 that were gained by VEGA 64. That can be explained by the huge memory speed gap between both GPUs 1080s faster memory provided better results.
Grand theft auto V
Grand theft auto is an open world masterpiece created by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar games; the game offers a huge open world map that is filled with life. The game requires rigorous computing power if you want to render the graphics at high resolutions.
The textures in the game require a huge amount of VRAM with adequate bandwidth and memory clock speed. GTX 1080 uses the superior GDDR5X memory with a clock speed that is almost three times the of the speed of HBM2 memory present in VEGA 64. The result of these different memory configurations was seen in the GTA V benchmarks, GTX 1080 barely hit 60FPS average at 4k max settings that too was fluctuating because of which the 1% lower result was less than 50. On the other hand, VEGA 64 struggled to handle the game at such a high resolution the average framerate that it got was 42 that is even lower than the GTX 1070.
Metro Last light
Metro last light is a game based on a Russian Novel “Metro 2033” the game is a sequel of the Metro 2033 game; the first-person shooter game heavily relies on the texture quality which heavily depends on the quality of the memory used in the Graphics card. The game is based on the underground metro stations and in Russia on the surface with extremely varied weather conditions. As the game is heavily based on the VRAM performance, the results were predictable. Again, the AMD’s flagship device bites the dust as it could not even get close to 50FPS while GTX 1080 was constantly hitting the 60FPS mark.
Conclusion
The conclusion here is easy with an additional 2.5% price you are getting a 4% performance boost if you choose GTX 1080 against AMD VEGA 64. If you want a flagship and do not have those extra 40,50 dollars than you would have to make do with the VEGA 64 that is not a bad Graphics cards in any circumstance. The fact that it has almost the doubled amount of stream processors makes it efficient to render videos and images that have more than 8k or 16k resolutions contrary to the GTX 1080’s potential.